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Colorado River Water Conservation District reports higher snowpack, Shoshone permanency progress and reservoir operations updates
Summary
Representatives from the Colorado River Water Conservation District briefed Grand County commissioners on recent increases in snowpack, project-level funding and updates on the Shoshone permanency effort, Wolford Reservoir operations and enterprise water marketing.
A Colorado River Water Conservation District (River District) briefing to Grand County commissioners Feb. 18 covered hydrologic updates, the Shoshone water-rights permanency effort, community-funding grants and enterprise water-marketing activity.
The River District reported improving mountain snowpack after a storm in February: county-wide basin readings improved from under 85% of average to roughly 90–95% in many upper-basin monitoring sites. Presenters cautioned the season remained only about halfway complete and that later-spring conditions and soil moisture will affect runoff.
District staff summarized regional River District priorities and operations. The briefing noted the district’s involvement in a proposed Upper Basin proposal that could bank up to 200,000 acre-feet annually into Lake Powell as a conservation buffer; district staff urged that transmountain diverters and other Upper Basin sources should participate to ensure supply balance. The briefing also reviewed the River District’s ongoing work on a Bureau of Reclamation grant application supporting Shoshone water-rights permanency; staff said a prior $40 million application was prepared but the new federal administration pulled the funding allocation pending further review.
The district said it had awarded about $480,000 in Community Funding Partnership grants to three projects, including a $300,000 award to Colorado Mesa University’s Powell Hutchins Water Center to expand water-policy and academic programming on the West Slope, with matching funds from CMU.
River District staff discussed Wolford Reservoir operations and recent unregulated inflow projections for Lake Powell. The district noted the importance of soil moisture conditions for runoff forecasting and said inflow forecasts into Lake Powell were below average at the time of the briefing. Staff also described the River District’s enterprise water marketing program: the district manages contractable water supplies from Wolford, Ridgway, Eagle Park and Elkhead reservoirs and reported remaining marketing capacity in several reservoirs (for example, Wolford had roughly 5,000 acre-feet available to market at the time of the briefing). The district reported historical enterprise sales volumes and described price differences between commercial and agricultural prices for marketed water.
Legislatively, the district reported five state water bills it was tracking and staff recommendations to support them; federal attention included continuing concerns about system conservation pilot programming and aquatic invasive-species prevention measures.
Ending
The River District encouraged local officials to attend upcoming “State of the River” public meetings (Grand County’s event was scheduled for May 13 in Granby) and said district staff would continue technical coordination with Northern Water and other basin partners on Shoshone permanency technical work and historical use analyses.
